THEMILITANT Weekly Organ of the Communist League of America Opposition VOL. II, No. 19.
NEW YORK, Saturday, December 7, 1929 PRICE CENTS Hoover Building Plan Swindle Congress Opens Intervenes in Sino Russ Conflict Lots of Promises for the Master to the Jobless The first regular session of the seventy first Congress opens this week with a schedule of work and legislation to be adopted that will round out the attack upon the standards of the American workers. What the office boys of capitalist class will accomplish at this session is already outlined in the dispatches from Washington Christmas Gift to the Boss First will come the sacred, religious duty of making its annual Christmas present to its capitalist master: the insignificant tax cut of 160, 000, 000 which the leaders of both Parties in Congress have already agreed to put in the socks hung at the chimney by the starving millionaires of the land.
Then the tariff tangle will be straightened out, following upon the message by Hoover. What it will signity, even in moderated form, is the jacking up of the United States tariff wall in a desperate endeavor by the American boss class to broaden the basis of their own narrowing home market by keeping out the more cheaply produced goods of Europe, and, inversely, cutting down the meager share they have allotted to the poor relatives across the sea. That the raised tariff schedules will not bring with them any increase of wages in compensation is obvious from the whole past tariff history of the country.
What is clear for the workers is that their wages have been cut, their working day lengthened, their efficiency increased by the crack of the foreman whip, and thelr unions smashed through, under the hitherto prevalling Fordney McCumber rates, and that their situation will not be improved one fota under the higher SmootHawley bill. What that bill will succeed in doing when it is passed, and in most part It will be is to increase the resentment of the other trading countries of the world, many of which have already protested in one form or another against the number of days after the Soviet Union had finally forced the Mukden government to enter into negotiations for the settleof the dispute around the Chinese Eastern Railway, the United States government, through secretary of state Stimson sent a note to the Chinese and Soviet Government, ostensibly to urge the two governments to settle the dispute but in actuallty to throw a spoke into the negotiations now taking place in Khabarovsk, Eastern Manchusia. Upon America initiative, the other imperialist powers, including the socialist government of MacDonald, sent identical notes.
Stimson is a Bit Late The Stimson note is a very cooly calculated piece of cunning. So long as the White Guard bandits and the Chinese mercenary bands continued their invasion of Soviet soil, there was no preventive action taken by American imperialism, which has the Chiang Kai Shek government at its command. When this butcher of the Chinese working class seized the jointly controlled Chinese Eastern Railway, there was again no protest from the United States. When Soviet citizens were arrested, tortured, imprisoned and brutally treatled in China, the United States maintained a discreet silence.
But now that the Red Army has successfully repulsed the Chinese and Russian White Guard forces, upon whose activity the imperialists counted since they are not now in a position for active military intervention of their own, and Russia has made Mukden come to the conference table to work out terms of agreement, Stimson guddenly discovers the existence of the Kellogg Peace Pact.
Stimson intervention into the situation at this datejust when the difficulties are about to be settled in Russia favor is not for a moment animated by any desire for peace. Were the American imimperalists 80 concerned about the horrors of war and the beauties of pacifism, they might start cleaning, their own front steps by withdrawing troops from Nicaragua, the Phillipines and other colonies and semi colonies of Wall Street.
What Stimson Worries Over What Stimson is concerned with is fear of the prestige and strength that wil accrue to the Soviet Union if the conflict is settled by agreement with Mukden (and Nanking tacit consent) to return the Railway to joint control. What he is further concerned with is to prevent such An agreement, keep the situation at high tension, provoke continued conflicts on the Manchurian border, so that at the proper moment the American government can step in with the generous offer to internationalize the Railway, that is, bring it under its influence. That is one of the main reasons why Japan which has heavy interests in Manchuria, refused to send an identic note to Russia and China.
For the moment in the present situation, Japan fears American influnece in Manchuria more than Russia.
Stimson note is an attempt to throw a spoke into the negotiations now taking place in Khabarovsk. It is a gesture hostile to the Soviet Union. All the more reason cor arousing the resistance of the workers everywhere to defend Russia revolutionary right to joint participation in theChinese Eastern. It is not to be defended on the basis of property rights or sacredness of treaties. for that way the workers cannot be mobilized. That this is the basis of Stalin agitation now, makes it necessary to point out more clearly the advantage to the world working class in depriving Chiang Kai Shek and his imperialist masters of the Chinese Eastern Railway as a weapon against the worker state.
Disarmament and the of Europe By Martin Abern President Herbert Hoover is preparing a big swindle for the American working class with his construction program to stall off the growing depression, The blustering confidence of American capitalist interests, received a rude shock in the wild crash recently on the stock market.
While American capitalists by no means feel that the fall will prove fatal; and while at the same time, they try to minimize its effects, nevertheless, it is clear that the shock to wide strata of people of all classes and groupings, including the as yet largely bourgeois minded workers, has been severe The same confidence as before in the status quo is no longer there.
Hoover Stabilizes Capitalism Schemes, or prayers, for permanent capitalist economic stability are forthcoming from all corners. Prosperity President Hoover is the champion of most of these hoped for capitalist stabilizers.
Hoover, the pride of the House of Mammon, stepped to the helm to guide the ship of profit.
But lo, in but a handful of months came the Wall Street crash, upsetting faith, bank accounts, business and jobs. All eyes turned to Hoover to speak his and also the wisdom of the House of Morgan.
As business begins to tremble; as factories and mills in many large centers begin to shut down; as unemployment, in the beginnings of a cold winter, jumps sharply from its already high figure, Hoover steps forward and trumpets: Business as usual! There is nothing fundamentally wrong with us (capitalist Bys.
tem. Let us build!
The Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, Julius Barnes, however, is satisfied with production and says. The anxiety. and problem of today is over the maintenance of buying power. But how? President Hoover with true Quaker calmness once said: What About the Unemployed. The primary safety to continued progperity will be continued willingneas of our people to save their enlarged earnings (what, the unemployed. to resist extravagance and waste (also the unemployed for the Southern textile workers. to give full individual exertion. Now, the practicality of the situation compels greater concreteness. So Hoover replies to the rumblings of uncertainity, distrust, restlessness by advising a policy, in the main, of public works, road building, construction, etc. Hoover further proposes that business hereafter plan its activities more carefully, attempt consciously to regulate the business of capitalism in accordance with a laid out scheme; in fact, to set up to date National Business Council, which by its character and purpose hopes to serve as a permanent regulator of capitalism, and upon occasion to spread sulve on the sore body of the workers.
It intends further to ignore, as much as posible, its own created instrument, Congress, as now too slow and inefficient for this world of business engineering.
Through this organized National business Council, that great individualism and needed competitive spirit of the true Americanism. so staunchly lauded by Hoover, takes a back seat. In fact, Hoover, outlines a policy, in socio political terms, of state socialism, or more correctly, state capitalism, with some added special governmental features borrowed from Mussolini. But organized production, or its development, is only possible where capitalism is replaced by working class rule, as in Soviet Russia.
The figures adduced by leading captContinued on Page the his proposed tarice. This resentment will on How Can Europe Be United. ticket and that is about the most tangible ly add fuel to the smouldering fires of the coming war, because the new tarife law 18 esentially a brutally aggressive measure of American Imperialism against its world competitors, for which they will try to pay back the in the same coin.
The naval bill will be put off until the London naval conference takes place next month. The naval construction program is the threat held by the United States against Great Britain primarily, that unless the latter fulfills the demands of the world banker, the United States will give it such a run for its money as will leave it floating breathless on the sea.
What Congress will do nothing about except to hand out oft slop is the increasingly bbvious tendency towards a deep economic depression which is cutting the ground from under the feet of the American workers. Layoffs, in batches of thousands, are taking place more frequently, particularly in the automobile, the steel and the building industries. These workers are joining the already large army of the unemployed, with no prospects before them but a bleak winter.
The Wage Cut Drive Congress will do nothing about the wage cut and speed up drive of the American bosses except to support it with all its heart. Those workers lucky enough to keep their jobs and stay of the read line will have to make up for those lackink in industry, and they wil have to do it by pouring more and more of their energy, physical and mental, into their machines to be coined into profit.
thing in his pacifist program.
Briand has felt the need of ameliora At Geneva the future unifiers of the ting the historical fate of the three huncontinent felt themselves little more at ease dred and fifty million people of Europe, than the bootleggers on the other side of who are the bearers of the highest civilizathe Ocean: They look with dismay upon tion and yet cannot live a century with the American police. Briand began and out a dozen wars and revolutions, Macconcluded his speeches by swearing by Donald, in the interest of pacifying our all that is sacred that the unification of planet, has crossed the Atlantic, The UnitEurope must in no case and under no coned States of Europe, disarmament, free ditions be directed against America. God dom of trade and peace are on the order forbid! In reading these declarations, the of the day. On all sides capitalist diplo American politicians must bave felt a macy is preparing a big pacifist soup. double joy: Briand is somewhat afraid of Peoples of Europe, peoples of the whole us. but he won succeed in putting us world, get out big spoons to swallow it of the track, with!
Although he repeated the words of Why this mobilization? Are not the Briand, Stresemann carried on a veiled posocialists in power in the most important lemic against him, Henderson polemicized countries of Europe or else preparing for against both of them, but mainly against it? Yes, that is just why. However, it the French Prime Minister. In fact, the is forth with apparent that the plans of whole discussion at Geneva unfolded acBriand and MacDonald are bringing cording to the following scheme. peace in two absolutely opposite direc Briand: In no case against the Unittions. Briand wants to unity Europe in ed States.
order that it may defend itself against Stresemann: Quite right. But some America. MacDonald wants to earn the have mental reservations, American can gratitude of America by helping it oprely only on Germany.
press Europe. Two trains are rushing to MacDonald: swear on the Bible that meet one another in order to save their loyalty and good will are the exclusive passengers. from the catastrophe!
endowment of the British, particularly the The Anglo French naval a ccord of Scotch.
July, 1928 was liquidated by a simple knit That is how the new international ting of the brows by America. This fact is atmosphere was created in Geneva.
a sufficient demonstration of the relation The internal weakness of Europe of for in the world: Do you imagine, springs primarily from its economic decay.
by chance, America intimates, that The economic strength of the United am going to adapt myself to your resolu States, on the contrary, constitutes its tions made on both sides of the Channel? unity The quesion arises: How to proIf you want your negotiations to be taken ceed so that the unification of Europe 19 seriously, then take the trouble to cross Continued on Page